Customers

[KB-Team]

The Customers section is the home for all of your customer information and the place to go to view their historical information.

Table of Contents

Video Tutorial
New Customer
Customer Details
Basic Info
Customer Settings (Edit Customer page)
Customer Custom Fields
Archive Customers
Customer Badges
Customer Quick Access
Masked Credentials

 

Video Tutorial

Getting Started with the Customers Module

 

New Customer

You can add a new customer from the customer page by selecting 'New Customer' here:

Alternatively, you can quickly add a new customer from the 'plus' menu option here:

 

Customer Details

When setting up a new customer, you have the ability to set up their contact information as well as some additional settings. Once created, you'll have the ability to add assets, devices, stored credit cards (with a payment integration), attachments and notes to the customer's profile. Also, once you begin to perform work for the customer, information like linked tickets, invoices, payments will all be accessible from the customer's detail page.

This is the main 'New Customer' page, let's go ahead and break down some of these settings individually.

 

Basic Info

The 'Basic Info' section will consist of all of your customer's contact information. By default, none of these fields are set to 'required', however, you can configure this in your Customer Preference settings located at:
Admin > Customers > Preferences.

Some important things to note regarding this section:

• Business names take precedent over first name / last name when viewing all of your customers from the main customer list.
• The 'Mobile' drop down expands so you can select the phone type. So, you may enter various phone numbers of different types by selecting the 'Add New Number' button.
• The 'Add Another Address' allows you to enter multiple addresses on file. You may also choose from the types 'Bill to', 'Ship to' and 'Physical'.

Note: We use customer emails as the unique identifier among customers in Syncro. So, no two customers may have the same email as the primary email.
If you'd like to use the same email among multiple customer accounts, you can do so in the Additional Notification Emails or Additional Invoice CC Emails sections covered in the next section.
Alternatively, you can use the same email across different customer accounts through customer contacts. Learn more about customer contacts.

Internal Ticket Warning:

The Internal Ticket Warning allows you to have a message appear on a per-customer basis every time a new ticket is opened on their behalf.

The setting is enabled in the ticket preferences section here. Every time a ticket is created for the customer thereafter, the message will appear on the ticket like so:

 

Customer Settings (Edit Customer page)

The Customer Settings section allows you to configure some advanced settings for the customer. Note: For those who jumped straight to this section, this is the portion of the screen you see when you edit a customer, rather than the global settings found in Admin.

Credit: Shows how much store credit they have. To immediately add some,

1. Click Add Store Credit.
2. If needed, click the appropriate register button.
3. In the Amount field, type the amount of store credit to add.
4. You can fill in a Ref num (such as why you are giving the credit) and Message.
5. Click Record Store Credit.

Tax Rate: If you do not select one, the system will use the default Tax Rate on invoices. Otherwise it will use the one you select in the dropdown.

Tax Free: If the customer is tax exempt, enable the Tax Free checkbox. If you are using QuickBooks, then when you do so, a QuickBooks Tax Exemption Reason dropdown will appear with options that were defined in QuickBooks. Select a reason from the dropdown so as to avoid errors for this customer when syncing their invoices to QuickBooks.

Enable Portal User: Allows you to create a portal user for the customer and will automatically send them an email to set up their login to the email on file. If no email is listed, you can manually add login information. When you enable this, you can then select the Portal Group they belong to and if you want to Require MFA for them. Learn more about using passwords with the customer portal.

Enable Remote Access: Enabling this setting allows the customer to access Assets through the Customer Portal through Splashtop. Be aware that you will be charged an additional $5 per Contact per month. See our End-User Remote Access article for more info.

SMS Service Enabled: Allows you to enable or disable SMS communication using the customer's mobile number.

Receive Billing Emails: When this is selected the top-level customer email will have all billing related emails sent to them

Receive Marketing Emails: When this is selected the top-level customer email address will receive Mailer emails.

Receive Report Emails: When this is selected the top-level customer will receive all ticket correspondence emails.

No Email - Of Any Kind: Disables all email communication from being sent to this customer. This includes all contacts who belong to the customer.

Additional Notification / Invoice CC Emails: Allows you to add additional emails to be notified along with the primary account. Emails entered in the 'additional notification' field will receive ticket-related emails, and 'invoice CC email addresses' will receive notifications related to invoicing only.

Additional Ticket Matching Email Addresses: Allows you to add additional emails that will attach to this customer when tickets are emailed in, in addition to the main customer and contact emails.

Default Estimate / Ticket / Invoice Template: Lets you select a different template than the default for estimates, tickets and invoices. See our Per Customer Templates article for more info.

Default Invoice Terms: Allows you to set a default payment term for the customer. Learn more about invoice terms.

Syncro Subdomain: Used for electronic ordering between accounts. Fill in the Syncro subdomain of a Syncro user who is a vendor you want to sell to or buy from.

 

Custom Fields

When adding a new customer or editing an existing one, customer custom fields can be accessed by clicking the Custom Fields tab. You may also manage your customer custom fields in the upper right by clicking Manage Custom Fields. Learn more about customer custom fields.

 

Archive Customers

There are times where you no longer do business with a client, don't want them listed any longer, but also don't want to lose all the records you have with them. That's where Archive Customers comes in. To do this action head to the Customer Detail page for the client you want to Archive.

 

Once you click Archive, the page will refresh and you are taken to the Customer Index page with a banner saying the customer was archived.

To View Archived Customers, head to the Customer Index page and click Customer Modules > Archived Customers.

 

Once you are looking at the list of Archived Customers, click the Customer Record you want to enable and click Actions > Re-Enable.

NOTE: If a customer has no associated data in Syncro (tickets, invoices, estimates, etc), there will be a Delete option shown instead of an Archive option. Deleting is permanent, and cannot be reversed.

 

Customer Badges

Our application allows you to apply customer badges or icons in order to quickly distinguish different customer types. This is done using the drop-down option in Customer Custom Fields.

You can apply badges that will follow the customer throughout the software, giving you quick, at-a-glance information on what type of customer they are. Common examples could be distinguishing between residential and business customers.

1. Navigate to Admin > Customers - Customer Custom Fields. to create custom fields for your customers.
2. Click New Field.
3. Give it a Name.
4. Click the Field type dropdown and select Drop Down.
5. Click Add Answer.
6. Fill in the Dropdown Entry field with one option for the drop down list.
7. Click the down arrow and select the desired icon or badge.
   
8. Repeat steps 5-7 to add additional selections (we added three in the example screenshot).
9. Click Create Customer field when finished.

After creating your custom fields and assigning badges to them, you can apply these custom fields to a new customer.

1. Navigate to the Customers tab.
2. Click New Customer.
3. Fill in the data.
4. Click the Custom Fields tab.
5. Click the custom dropdown you created and select the desired choice.
   
6. Click Create Customer.

You can also add icons on existing customers.

1. Navigate to the Customers tab.
2. Click a customer name.
3. Click Edit.
4. Click the Custom Fields tab.
5. Click the custom dropdown you created and select the desired choice.
6. Click Save Changes.

That's it! You will now see the icon by their name.

 

Customer Quick Access

Anywhere that Customer name shows in the Customer Tab, Tickets, Invoices or Estimates there is a hover-over icon that can be clicked providing information about that customer and allowing to perform various actions to editing the Customer Record.

 

Masked Credentials

Masked credentials are a way to securely store login credentials, but also make them easy to access without requiring a long password to be entered. Credentials can be saved under a customer, contact, or a document in the documentation center. These credentials can be accessed in the customer portal or can be private/internal.

Additionally, the password field is salted and encrypted. The salt is per row. The password is only decrypted and sent to the client at the time that the field is clicked to be shown.

Head to the Credentials tab on the Customer detail page to add, edit, view, or delete customer credentials.

Name: This is there to help categorize the credential so you know what it's for.
Username: Usually an email but can be whatever Username type you want (Text Field)
Host/URL: Link to the site if applicable
Password: Click the field to enter a password. Next time the page loads, this field will be starred
Notes: Any notes for the credential
Public: Choose whether the credential is public or private/internal

After you have entered everything you should be all set. It's worth noting that once the page refreshes and moving forward the password field defaults to showing stars until clicked.

Creating a contact credential:

Head to the contacts tab for an existing contact to add, edit, or delete credentials.

Access to the credentials in the customer portal can be handled by Portal User Permission Groups:

- Add "Credentials - View All" and "Credentials - View Mine" for credentials

Restricting internal user access to credentials can be handled through Security Group settings:

- Add "Credentials - View, New, Edit, Delete"

Credential Access Report

There is a report that allows Admins to view who has accessed the credential details along with time stamps. Head to the Reports tab or Admin > Reports > Credential Access Report to view it.

Credentials in Documentation Center:

Masked credentials can be added to documents within the documentation center to be shared internally or publically on the customer portal. More information on adding masked credentials to the documentation center here.